


Slytherins at Play

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Litha to Lammas 2020 [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Double Penetration, Established Relationship, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Humor, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Present Tense, Slytherin Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:21:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24895330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: AU. It’s Harry’s seventh year in Slytherin, his first year after the war, and his second year knowing Blaise, Theo, and Draco so…well.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Theodore Nott/Harry Potter/Blaise Zabini, Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter
Series: From Litha to Lammas 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795561
Comments: 29
Kudos: 756





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics being posted between the Summer Solstice and the first of August. It will have a second part to be posted tomorrow. A request from iria4285 for _Harry/Draco/Theo/Blaise, Harry was sorted to Slytherin and in seventh year he and his best friends have fun._

“Tonight?”

Harry glances up with a smile when he feels Draco’s hand on his shoulder. Draco is the one of them who touches him the most, as if he assumes Harry will vanish if he looks away for too long a period of time. Not that Harry _minds,_ exactly. “Sure. But ten or later, okay? I have this beast of a Transfiguration essay to finish first.”

Draco rolls his eyes. “Stop saying ‘okay,’ Potter, you sound Muggle. And if you managed Transfiguration _last_ year with everything going on, then you can manage it in our NEWT year.” He flops into a green chair across from Harry, part of the little circle that Harry and his friends arrange on a regular basis, and stares at him.

“It’s all right, Draco, you can say ‘Voldemort.’” Harry winks at him when he flinches and turns back to his essay. “And if you can’t wait, go and bring yourself off until I’m ready.”

Draco glares at him, then gets up and stalks towards the stairs that lead up to the seventh-year boys’ bedroom. Harry manages to keep his jaw from falling open. Well, _there’s_ something he didn’t know. Draco likes to grope and play, sure, but he normally can wait a few hours.

Harry raises his eyebrows and goes back to his essay. Then again, if he thinks about it, Draco has always been impatient.

*

“So, Potter, what made the Hat think _you_ were good enough to get into Slytherin?”

Harry took a deep breath as he slid onto the bench. He hadn’t _wanted_ to sit next to Malfoy, but there doesn’t seem to be a choice. Parkinson, the only other new Slytherin sorted between him and Malfoy, was sitting in a different place down the bench with the other girls, and sneering at him as pointedly as anyone else.

Harry clenched his hands under the table. He had to get past this, he had to stand up for himself, or being in Slytherin House for seven years would be more intolerable than he’d already thought it would be. His pleas hadn’t convinced the Hat. It had said it could see too much ambition in him.

Maybe Harry could be a sort of Gryffindor even if he was in Slytherin. He leaned forwards, and Malfoy leaned towards him in what was probably unconscious imitation.

“Figure it out.”

“What?”

Harry grinned at him and sat back, trying to ignore the way his heart bounded. “The Hat saw something in me. I already _know_ why you’re in Slytherin, because you’ve been bragging about it everywhere. But some people prefer to be _subtle_ about things. See if you can figure out what brought me here.”

That was getting him a lot more speculative looks than sneers. Harry turned to watch the rest of the Sorting, hoping that it wouldn’t be so bad.

“Potter.”

Harry glanced over at Malfoy as he applauded the Sorting of Blaise Zabini into Slytherin. “What?”

“I want to know _now_.”

Harry almost bit back his smug grin, then decided there was no reason to and let it bloom across his face. He shrugged as the plates filled with food. “Like I said, you’ll have to figure it out. Why should I explain it to you? I thought Slytherins were supposed to be _cunning._ ”

Malfoy alternated between being indignantly silent and whining for an explanation the rest of the meal. Harry found himself more amused than irritated, which he supposed was a good prediction for how he and Malfoy might get along in the future.

He was still upset that he hadn’t got into Gryffindor with Ron, but he was going to hold his own here. Maybe the Hat had been right.

*

Harry puts down his essay when it’s time to go to dinner, and catches Blaise’s eye as he stands. Blaise smiles in an amused fashion—then again, it’s rare that he doesn’t—and puts down his own book. Ancient Runes, Harry sees. He wonders idly if he should have paid more attention in that class. Then again, it wasn’t runes that let him defeat Voldemort, or maintain his place in the Slytherin House power structure, or keep his friendship with Ron, so it probably doesn’t matter.

“Draco still upstairs having that wank you told him to take?” Blaise asks out of the corner of his mouth as they walk towards the Great Hall. Theodore falls in behind them like a shadow. He’s vocal enough in the right environment, though, Harry thinks complacently.

Harry snorts. “Probably. I didn’t know he’d take it as an order.”

“You ought to have.”

Harry nods. He supposes that’s a fair accusation. They’re friends, all of them, but—well, they all know who leads. Not rules, which is unusual enough for Slytherin House and probably as much difference as his friends are willing to tolerate.

 _Strange how you still don’t really think of yourself as completely Slytherin,_ Harry thinks as he slides into his place at the bench. Blaise takes the seat on his left, and Theodore the one on his right, leaving the place directly across from him for Draco.

Then again, he isn’t a pureblood, and there are still Slytherins who will throw that in his face. They just don’t do it as often now that he’s defeated Voldemort and proved that being pureblood means less than nothing.

“Harry!”

Ron is walking into the Great Hall with Neville and Dean. Harry waves to him and ignores the ache that fills him when he sees the space where Seamus should be. The battle at Hogwarts last year killed a lot of people, and Seamus was one of them, when a Blasting Curse that hit Fenrir Greyback and catapulted him over a balcony caught Seamus in the backlash.

“Why do you wave to Gryffindors?” mutters a Selwyn fourth-year who’s sitting across from Parkinson. “It’s disgusting.”

“Not nearly as disgusting as your inbred face,” Harry replies calmly, and ignores the laughter that follows and the way the fourth-year blushes. That’s something else that’s served him well in Slytherin: attacking first and letting the offense fall out where it may. If he can offer as good as he gets, then most Slytherins are going to listen to the person with the superior sense of humor.

“At least my mother wasn’t a Mud—”

Selwyn stops speaking and sits there with his mouth stuck open. Then he wriggles his lips and tongue around, looking horrified. A second later he’s clutching at his throat.

The laughter is general at the Slytherin table now, and Harry rolls his eyes. “You’re not choking or suffocating, you fool,” he tells Selwyn, who looks dramatic enough to faint. “You just can’t close your mouth because you still intend on saying that word.”

It takes another few seconds for Selwyn to get the message, but he finally shuts his mouth with a click and stares at Harry. “Why did that happen?”

“You honestly didn’t realize that I spelled the table and the common room years ago to prevent anyone from speaking that word?” Harry shakes his head and reaches for another scoop of potatoes, ignoring Blaise’s silent amusement. If Blaise has something to say about the way Harry eats, then he can do it aloud. “Maybe you never tried saying it before, I don’t know, but you should have seen other people doing it.”

“I thought _you_ were doing something to them.”

“Oh, I did.”

“I mean, to them personally.”

“Oh, I did.” Harry glances up with a smile. No need for Selwyn to know that since he’s become a seventh-year, he would find it beneath him to attack a fourth-year. The threat is as good as the reality, most of the time, with Slytherins. “You just assume that I would be foolish enough to do it in _public._ ”

Selwyn pales and decides it’s a good idea to go back to his food. Harry snorts and fills his mouth with potatoes. They’re delicious with melted butter. He watches with tolerance as Theodore adds enough spices to turn his own vegetables an entirely different color. Harry won’t speak up about his friends’ eating habits, either, unless they’re about to take in an unsuspected poison or potion, or something of the kind.

“You took my advice to heart,” Blaise says softly.

Harry grins at him. He used to say that all the time, but then, not that many people have tested Harry’s enchantments on the table or in the common room for a while. “Yes, yes, take all the credit for it.”

“I’m happy to,” Blaise says, deepening his voice, and reaching out to slip his hand onto Harry’s thigh beneath the table. Harry lets his eyes grow distant, remembering the evening that he actually made the decisions to perform the enchantments.

*

“If you want them to stop saying that word, you’ll have to do something about it yourself.”

Harry stared up at Blaise where he stood in front of the fireplace, blocking Harry’s furious contemplation of it. “I’ve dueled them and I’ve gone to Professor Snape. What else would you have me do?”

“Are you a wizard or not?” Blaise gave a dubious look at the huge stack of books sitting beside Harry’s green chair, as if to say that he wouldn’t account Harry a wizard until he read through them. “You’re studying enough for that Tournament you didn’t enter. Why not look for a spell that could make them stop?”

Harry blinked. Then he snatched the topmost book off the pile without a word, while Blaise chuckled and walked away.

It had taken Harry three weeks of reading, but he’d found something, all right. An intent ward cast over an area—like a piece of furniture or a single room—could prevent someone from saying the word “Mudblood,” and it would keep functioning as long as they intended to speak it. Most people didn’t bother with intent wards, apparently, because they could only really prevent a single action and so weren’t good about stopping a duel or an attack. Someone could just circumvent them and use a different spell instead.

But Harry didn’t want to prevent a duel or an attack. He wanted to stop people from saying that word.

And he did. The first time he watched Cassius Warrington nearly choke himself trying to figure out what was going on had ranked as the best day of his life up until that point. Even if Blaise _had_ leaned over and said, “You took my advice to heart,” for the first time of so many times Harry wouldn’t have been able to keep track of them with the most advanced Arithmantic calculations.

People came after him, of course, but Harry refused to remove the intent wards no matter how much they cursed him or dueled him. And when they took it into the corridors where Professor Snape could see, then their Head of House had no choice but to step in.

The older Slytherins had looked right stupid complaining about a spell a fourth-year had performed, too. That had probably been the beginning of the respect and the leadership position Harry had taken in his house.

And if Blaise thought Harry owed it all to him, well, the price he eventually claimed was one that Harry was more than willing to pay.

*

“This evening?”

Theodore’s voice is soft behind Harry, almost breathy, but there’s no softness about the hand that touches his shoulder. Harry leans back against him and nods, but says, “I’ll be by a bit later. I want to talk to Ron first.”

“You always want to talk to him first,” Theodore mutters, but this time the breathy voice has a hint of laughter in it. He steps back, salutes Harry with a hand sort of waved in the vicinity of his forehead, and then turns around and follows most of the other Slytherins back to their common room.

Harry shakes his head fondly after him and walks over to catch up with Ron. He’s standing with his arm around Hermione’s shoulders. It took years and Harry had to speak sharply to Ron more than once after he said something stupid, but Hermione finally agreed to be his girlfriend.

Frankly, it’s more than Ron deserves after the way he stumbled around not inviting her to the Yule Ball.

Then again, Harry’s not about to talk about people deserving certain things after the way _he_ got what it never even occurred to him to look for.

“Mate!” Ron reaches out his free hand and claps Harry on the arm. “Making any more grand plans for your career after school?”

Harry shakes his head. “The Ministry keeps writing to offer me Auror training, but that’s _all_ they’re offering me, and honestly, why would I be tempted by that? I already killed the Darkest wizard in the world at sixteen. Life as an Auror isn’t going to be exciting enough for me.”

“What about the Department of Mysteries?” Hermione asks instantly. “I know that you’ll have to train in some other Department in the Ministry first, but if you did the Aurors and then transferred over…”

Harry smiles. “What, and use up all my political goodwill?”

“They couldn’t _keep_ you there, and if you did well enough in the Aurors, I know you would be a brilliant candidate for the Department of Mysteries!”

Harry nods and listens to her ramble on. He isn’t sure yet what he wants to do with his life, other than enjoy himself. He thinks he has a right, with Voldemort just defeated not even a year ago, after all.

And he doesn’t really want to go into a career where people would tell him to stop associating with his friends.

“Harry? Are you listening to me?”

“Of course, Hermione. You said that you think I need to do better at Ancient Runes if I’m going to be an Unspeakable.”

Hermione nods hard enough to make her hair fall around her eyes. At times like this she recalls the little girl who Harry helped Ron and Theodore rescue from a troll in their first year. “And you _should_ be an Unspeakable. When we were there at the end of fifth year, remember all those artifacts they had in the room next to the Time-Turners?”

Harry interrupts before she can launch into another full flight, because he does want to spend time with Blaise and Draco and Theodore tonight. “And will the Unspeakables permit _me_ to apply, when I was the one who ended up smashing a lot of those rooms?” It was a desperate fight to bring down Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange, and Harry did succeed well enough that Voldemort was forced into wraith form for the next six months, but the Department of Mysteries lost whole rooms of precious objects over it.

“Oh, dear.” Hermione has obviously not considered this possibility, but then she brightens with the possibility of a righteous campaign. “I could write a letter for you, Harry! One that says you were just trying to defeat your prophesied enemy, and—”

Harry catches Ron’s eye, and Ron mouths, “Mental,” although with such pride and happiness in his eyes that Harry knows how little he means it. “I do have to go, Hermione,” he says, his awareness of his friends tugging him back towards the common room even though he isn’t physically there. “Slytherin party tonight.”’

“There’s an awful lot of those lately,” Hermione says, in the suspicious tone she uses when people do something other than study for their NEWTS.

Harry shrugs. “Yeah, but can you blame us? A whole lot of people stopped living under a dark cloud at the end of last year.”

Hermione’s face softens, which means it’s up to Ron to take up the thread. “Yeah, but you can party with us in Gryffindor Tower, mate! There’s hardly anyone who would try to kick you out now.”

Harry chuckles. “No offense, but I like Slytherin parties better.”

“Why, though?”

Ron looks ready to defend the honor of his House, but Harry knows how to interrupt both him and Hermione. “Because we send the younger students to _bed_ around ten, and then the fun starts.”

Hermione turns bright red and says, “We need to go get ready for the party tonight, too!” Then she drags Ron away.

Harry turns towards the Slytherin common room, shaking his head. He cherishes Ron and Hermione, but he also hopes at least one of them takes the initiative _soon_ , or they might end up not shagging until they’ve been dating for ten years.

Theodore is waiting for him at the top of the stairs down to the dungeons. Harry stares at him as he walks past. “Worried that I’d get lost?”

“Worried that you might need rescuing from Gryffindors determined to curse you, maybe.” Theodore falls easily in step behind him as they make their way down to the dungeons.

Harry rolls his eyes, but he also smiles where Theodore can’t see. Theodore is good at rescuing him, he has to admit.

*

“Don’t you think that if Potter was the Heir of Slytherin, he would have better sense than to _announce_ himself that way by using Parseltongue in front of a dueling club?”

Harry looked up with a blink. He’d been walking alone from Potions, as usual, because he had some acquaintances in Slytherin but not that many friends, and everyone seemed to believe that walking with him away from Potions would draw Snape’s wrath. And so of course a trio of older Gryffindors, including that git Cormac McLaggen, had taken the chance to corner him and tell him what they were going to do to him for Petrifying people.

Now Theodore Nott was leaning against the wall like a shadow and staring at all of them. Harry hadn’t even heard him arrive.

“The Heir of Slytherin has to be someone quiet and private,” Theodore continued, straightening up and staring at the Gryffindors with an expression that crossed boredom and annoyance. “Not someone whose every movement around the school is tracked the way Potter’s has been. If he was opening the Chamber of Secrets, we would _know_.”

“He could just be subtle!” McLaggen was recovering the fastest, and he sneered at Theodore. “You don’t know—”

“Potter? _Subtle?_ The one who chased Draco Malfoy all over the place on his broom first year and said that he wasn’t _that_ kind of Slytherin when Weasley asked him why?”

McLaggen flushed. Harry thought it was probably more because Harry was Slytherin’s Seeker now and was beating Gryffindor all the time than because he was embarrassed, but maybe it was both. “You’d lie for him! You’re a snake like he is!”

Theodore just watched him with an expression of polite disdain that Harry immediately wanted to copy. He did seem to wear his emotions too openly most of the time, at least if you asked the other Slytherins.

“Got nothing to say?” McLaggen asked finally, when a minute had passed and everyone had just been silent.

But he sounded wary. Somehow, Theodore had knocked him off-balance by being quiet and nothing else. Harry _had_ to learn that.

“There’s nothing that needs to be said,” Theodore said. “You don’t really believe that Potter is the Heir of Slytherin yourselves. You just want someone to blame because you’re frightened and can’t admit it to the rest of your House.”

Harry smiled a little. He thought Theodore was right, even though he would never have guessed that himself.

But there was something he _could_ guess. There were advantages to having two Gryffindor friends.

“I think something else is going on here, Nott,” he said, addressing Theodore by his last name in front of the others the way Theodore was doing him. It was an odd kind of courtesy, but most Slytherins practiced it, and Harry didn’t want to upset his House. “The old resentment.”

“Which one?” Theodore sighed. “It’s so hard to keep track of what Gryffindors resent Slytherins for, we’re so much better than they are in every way.”

“Wait one minute, you little—” McLaggen began.

“The old resentment that I didn’t Sort into Gryffindor,” Harry said, and took a step forwards, his focus on McLaggen. “I remember _this_ one.” He gestured at McLaggen. “He was upset the night of the Opening Feast last year, and said something about me being a traitor to my parents because I hadn’t become a Gryffindor like they did.”

Theodore shifted his stance. One thing most Slytherins had learned was that you _didn’t_ insult Harry Potter’s parents if you didn’t want all the carved snakes on your headboard to come to life and cover you at night, hissing angrily into your ears.

“You are.” McLaggen folded his arms and smirked as if he thought he was taking control of the conversation back somehow.

Harry snorted. “You know that families don’t follow Sorting patterns all the time. You _ought_ to know it, McLaggen, when you’re the first person in your family in centuries not to Sort into Ravenclaw.”

McLaggen turned bright red. “Who told you that?”

“It’s all over the place for people who want to know,” Harry said. “Sort of the way you think information about me is.” He shook his head. “You’re resentful of me because you think people might start thinking about family Sorting patterns when they look at me, and that means they’ll realize you didn’t Sort into Ravenclaw because you aren’t smart enough for it.”

The other two Gryffindors just looked baffled, but McLaggen snarled and drew his wand.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Harry said softly.

“Why? Got some second-year spell that you think can scare me?”

Harry smiled. “No.” And then the Gryffindors finally seemed to hear the click of boots on the floor, but they turned around too late, especially since they’d drawn their wands when McLaggen did.

“What is the meaning of this? _Spells in the corridors_?” Filch looked delighted. Since Mrs. Norris had been Petrified, it didn’t matter who he caught, they were always getting the ultimate punishment. And both Harry and Theodore had their hands well away from their wands, while McLaggen and the rest were obviously armed.

“Mr. Filch! We were just—”

“Don’t tell me what you were _just_ ,” Filch hissed, stalking nearer. “You were getting ready to Petrify more people! The way you Petrified my poor Mrs. Norris, eh?”

“No, Mr. Filch! Potter is the Heir of Slytherin! _He_ did it!” one of the other Gryffindors whose name Harry didn’t know babbled, pointing towards Harry and Theodore.

Filch sneered. “The boy who was nowhere near my darling when she was hurt? While _you_ were?”

While Filch ranted at the Gryffindors, Harry and Theodore slipped away. It was only bad luck that the Gryffindors had halted next to Mrs. Norris when she was found hanging on the wall after the Halloween Feast, but Harry wasn’t above making bad luck work for him.

“Remind me to learn how to look as disdainful as you do,” he told Theodore when they were almost back to the common room.

“It didn’t look as though you needed help, Potter.”

Harry shrugged and spoke the password for the door, _Purus_. “Thanks anyway.”

Theodore grunted, and that would have been the end of it, except that the next day he told Harry to call him Theodore in public. A Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff might have thought it entirely unrelated.

But Harry wasn’t a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff, and that was about the time he finally began to accept it.


	2. Chapter 2

“Tonight?”

Blaise’s voice, of all of theirs, is the soft one when Harry comes in through the door of the common room, and Harry nods and grins to him. “You know it,” he says, before he picks up his Ancient Runes book and goes back to studying.

This time, though, he isn’t nearly as productive as he was before dinner. He’s thinking too much about what’s going to happen when he goes up to the seventh-year boys’ bedroom—all theirs now. Neither Crabbe nor Goyle came back this year after their fathers died in the war, and so Harry and Theodore and Blaise and Draco can play behind the Silencing Charms that automatically engage when the door closes.

Finally, an hour later, Harry admits to himself that he’s read the same page four times and still doesn’t understand it. He puts down his book and stands to stretch languidly. Theodore and Blaise are focused on him immediately, Harry knows, despite the fact that to all appearances, they’re sitting on the couches nearest the fire with books of their own.

“I’m for bed,” Harry announces.

“So am I,” Blaise says and stands and yawns extravagantly. Theodore waves his hand at them and concentrates anew on the book. He must want to finish one more chapter before he comes up.

That’s fine with Harry. He goes up the stairs with Blaise following him eagerly, and the minute they get out of sight of the common room, Blaise grabs him, spins him, and presses his shoulders against the wall and his lips against Blaise’s.

Kissing Blaise is like being at the ocean, Harry always thinks. His mouth is as warm as sunlight, and his tongue moves like a rising and falling wave. He’s a _great_ kisser. Harry snogs him and lets himself be thoroughly snogged, his hands gripping and massaging Blaise’s shoulders.

He’s glad that he has all his friends, all his lovers, but he has to admit that it was Blaise who first convinced him that this could work.

*

“That’s enough.”

Harry ignored Blaise’s words, since they were all in the Slytherin common room, and he could have been talking to almost anyone. But he definitely noticed when Blaise swiped Harry’s book right out of his hands.

Harry bolted to his feet, his head swimming with pain and his eyes with black dots, but he didn’t care. “ _Give me back my book_ ,” he said.

“You spoke in Parseltongue, Harry.”

That was always a sign that his connection to Voldemort was acting up. Harry grimaced and rubbed his forehead. Since the end of fourth year when he had been kidnapped and used in a resurrection ritual by Peter Pettigrew, the scar had felt as if it was standing out several centimeters more than the rest of his skin. “Fine. Sorry. But I need to make sure that I know how to do all the different kinds of shields for the next time the Death Eaters come after me.” He held out his hand.

Blaise tossed the book onto a chair behind him, his eyes intent. “You’ve been doing so much studying lately, and for what?”

“Uh, to survive?” Harry stared at Blaise. He was never stupid, but right now, he was sure acting like it.

“You’re forgetting how to live,” Blaise said, and moved towards him.

Harry started, because that sounded so much like the wording of the prophecy Dumbledore had revealed to him after the resurrection that he wondered if he’d been muttering in his sleep about it and Blaise had overheard. While he was distracted, Blaise gripped his shoulders and shoved him back into the chair.

“Blaise?” Harry said, staring up at him. Blaise only had to widen his legs a little more and he would be straddling Harry’s lap. That was—so strange that Harry’s brain was scrambling in circles and he had no idea what to do or say.

“You’ve been so distracted this year,” Blaise said, and his voice was low, soft enough to keep Harry from really identifying what he was feeling. The shimmer around them said he had put up a Privacy Charm, at least. “You’ve totally been ignoring all the lures that we’ve been throwing out.”

Harry opened his mouth to ask who “we” was, and Blaise’s mouth descended on his.

Harry found himself leaning back into the couch with the sheer warmth of it. Heat surged through his body, and he widened his legs, and Blaise sank down into his lap. Harry pressed up against him, hard and needing to know that Blaise was too, and groaned when he felt it.

The groan led Blaise to slide his tongue into Harry’s mouth, and it was beyond sweet. Harry sank his fingers into Blaise’s shoulders and pinched, hard. Blaise shuddered in return, his eyes widening.

For the first time since the resurrection, for the first time all fifth year, the cloak of numbness and hatred slid from Harry’s shoulders. Now he was alive, and he wanted to go on being alive. He started to turn them and press Blaise down on the couch.

Blaise pulled away with a splutter and a cough. Harry paused, some dread climbing his spine. Now was the time that Blaise might say it had been a joke to bring Harry back to himself, and—

“Not in public,” Blaise said, and his color was high enough to show in his cheeks. “I mean, we’re not opposed to being together, but not in public.”

“Who _is_ we?” Harry asked, licking his lips. He wanted to kiss Blaise again. He wanted to pull multiple warm bodies down on top of him and snog them and touch them, and from the way Blaise was talking, he might get the chance.

“Draco and Theo and I.”

Harry blinked. “I thought Draco was dating Pansy.”

Blaise shook his head. “He thought about it, and they did go to the Yule Ball together, but you went with Patil.”

Harry shrugged. “As a friend. I—think I knew then that I preferred blokes.” Women were great, and Harry did feel attraction for some of them, but blokes were the people his eyes had lingered on at the Yule Ball and after, Diggory and Krum and even Draco, although it had been hard to admit it to himself.

“You’re taking this much better than I assumed you would.” Blaise was looking around now as if he thought _Harry_ was the one playing a prank on _him_.

“You’re my closest friends. And I like blokes. And I _like_ the thought of more than one person playing with me.”

“Playing with you?”

If Harry hadn’t been so close, he wouldn’t have seen the way Blaise’s eyes widened and darkened, but he was and he did. Harry smiled and sprawled back on the couch the way he’d tried to push Blaise, spreading his legs and seeing the way Blaise’s eyes focused on the bulge in his robes. “Yeah.”

Blaise shuddered and spent too long staring before he wrenched his eyes away. “I. Yes. I—need to talk to Draco and Theo.”

“But you’re all right with sharing me?”

“Sharing you, sharing ourselves,” Blaise said. “Draco snogged me once he was sure he wasn’t going to make a go of it with Pansy. Theo and I have met a few times in a cupboard to jerk each other off.”

Harry moaned. The mere thought made him feel as if he was going to come right there. He managed to keep his hand at his side, but it was more of an effort than he liked.

“And Draco and Theo might have done more than that, unless you assume that one of them climbed into the wrong bed by mistake. They were climbing out of the same one a few mornings ago.”

“And I _missed_ that?” Harry shook his head. He was usually more observant than that. “I can’t believe it.”

“You’ve had lots to think about.” Then Blaise was speaking in a somber voice, his eyes locked on Harry. “But now you’ve got to think about us, Harry. This seems easy, but it’s going to take a lot of work. And all of us want you more than it’s healthy to talk about. You’re the sun we all revolve around.” Blaise’s color deepened again, but he kept talking, which was more than Harry could have done if he’d had to say it. “You—we need you to hold it together, or it’s going to fall apart.”

“I can do this,” Harry said, sitting up and closing his legs. At least Blaise looked a little mournful to lose the sight of him. “I want to. I didn’t know I wanted all of you so much because I never thought about it, but—this is more important to me than Voldemort.”

Blaise flinched back at the sound of the name, but he was grinning as he leaned forwards to touch Harry’s face. “Yes, it is.”

*

Waves of desire lap over Harry as Blaise’s tongue moves in his mouth, and he shrugs away from the wall and strides towards their bedroom. Blaise still has that aversion to anyone but the four of them knowing what they do together, and Harry doesn’t want to satisfy their particularly voyeuristic yearmates.

He opens the door to their bedrooms. The room has four almost identical beds in a half-circle, facing the giant windows that look out into the gloom of the lake. Draco is seated on his own bed, consulting a parchment with a frown on his face.

He drops it the instant he sees Harry and says, “ _Finally_ ,” then rushes across the room and knocks Harry onto Blaise’s bed.

There’s Cushioning Charms in place, as always, and Harry laughs and opens his arms and legs in welcome. He’s aching now with his own longing, and Draco kneels over him and stares down, eyes wandering over his face.

“How do you want me?” Draco whispers.

“In me, under me,” Harry says succinctly, reaching up with one hand to trace Draco’s hair back behind his ear.

Draco closes his eyes and shudders all over before hastily beginning to strip off his shirt. Harry smiles. He leads. He gets fucked because he likes it, but he leads.

And he’s the one who had to lead the first time they were together, too, he thinks as he begins to undress himself, watching Draco with an eye that knows everything about him, and accepts the new scar tissue from the final battle in the middle of Draco’s back as well as the old angles of his face that have stayed pointed.

Which is sort of funny, considering that it was apparently Draco who had the idea to ask him to take the furthest steps in their sixth year.

*

“I—you really want this?”

Harry nodded and reached back to make sure that the lubrication he’d smeared around his arsehole hadn’t dried while Draco was hesitating. “Of course I do. What’s the matter? Not up to it?” he added, and glanced at Draco’s cock jutting between his legs. “It looks like you are.”

“Of course I’m bloody up to it.” Draco was blushing, though, and kept his eyes averted from Harry as though anywhere he might look he would see something he didn’t want to. Or maybe wanted to see too much, Harry thought, amused, stroking his cock with two fingers. “I just wouldn’t want to—get fucked my first time.”

“We all have arsholes that are virgins to a cock here, and I want to go first,” Harry said. “I hear it feels bloody amazing.”

“But it could hurt.”

Harry got up, walked over to Draco, and touched his shoulder until he looked up. Harry kissed him softly, and Draco melted into it with a sigh. Harry knew he didn’t snog as well as Blaise, but Draco seemed to prefer Harry, clinging to him as if he was going to slide down the wall and puddle on the floor.

“It’s all right to be scared of pain,” Harry said, pulling back from Draco and smiling at him. “I know you are, and I know that you’ve fought to stand beside me anyway.” They were training relentlessly for the battle they knew was probably coming at the end of this year, as they found and destroyed the Horcruxes, and Draco was in all those practices even though Voldemort had cast _Crucio_ on him over the summer for refusing the Dark Mark. “I just trust you not to hurt me, to cast all the preparation spells you need.”

In the end, that was more than six preparation spells, and Harry would have been fine with half that number. But this was about Draco’s comfort as much as his, and when Draco finally eased his cock into Harry, past the tight cling of his entrance—

It _did_ feel bloody amazing. Harry let his head loll back on the pillow and groaned. He’d never had anyone this close to him, ever, and to know it was one of his best friends, the one who had pushed him and taunted him and challenged him and grown to respect him, made it better.

 _So_ much better. Having someone inside him was intimate in a way that Harry hadn’t known before but greedily embraced.

“Fuck me,” he whispered, and Draco did that, slowly and then faster as if he couldn’t help himself, and it turned out that Harry needed those preparation spells after all. Draco’s thrusts were hard enough to make him come without a touch to his cock. Harry ground his elbows into the bedsheets and orgamsed with a long, low cry.

“Bloody hell.”

Harry opened his eyes, and smiled, and reached out to trace one finger down Draco’s chest. Draco shook, and his orgasm followed that path, springing out of him. Harry watched with languid satisfaction spreading through him like the warmth.

“And that felt good?” Draco asked a few minutes later, when he’d recovered his breath and he was curled up on the bed next to Harry. Theodore and Blaise wouldn’t be far away, Harry knew, but they had agreed to let Draco fuck Harry alone this first time, because Draco would probably feel self-conscious with them watching.

This _thing_ between them really took a lot of balancing and thinking and reflection, but Harry wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It did,” Harry said, and kissed Draco’s cheek. “If you want to do it, or have me do it for you, say so. But if you want to be inside me again, I’m going to enjoy that.”

Draco tensed, then sighed and leaned against him. “I don’t know whether I’m going to want it or not. But—I’d enjoy doing what you said.”

Even now, Draco was still tense and wound-up inside, a reminder that just because you had a caring family didn’t mean you’d come out unscathed. Harry smiled sadly and stroked his hair until he fell asleep.

*

That evening fades and tatters away like mist in the face of the sun, though, seeing Draco’s smile. Harry smiles and waves his hand lazily. When the Horcrux in his soul vanished after Voldemort hit him with the Killing Curse—and the hell he had to put up with from his lovers for that, honestly, it was enough to make him wish he’d found a different way—his magic swelled in strength. Now he can manage wandless charms easily.

And one of the most frequently cast is his lubrication charm. Alone at the Dursleys’ house in the summer between his fifth and sixth years, Harry used to cast it and fuck himself with his wand. It was good, but not enough.

Blaise is coming towards him now as Draco lies back on the bed and Harry moves to sit on him. Blaise halts and tosses his head a little. “ _I_ was going to ask if I could fuck you.”

Harry clenches his arse and murmurs another variant of the charm as Draco’s hands tighten on his hips. Honestly, Draco and Blaise are so passionate with each other, and sometimes it sparks into sex and sometimes into fights. Harry isn’t in the mood for a fight right now. He sighs as he becomes so slick that Draco slides seamlessly into him. “You can both fit.”

Blaise is silent for so long that Harry looks over his shoulder, a sacrifice when he just wants to close his eyes and enjoy himself. Blaise’s jaw is dangling a little. “You—you’d let me do that?”

“Blaise, I _like_ this.” Harry lets his head sag back as Draco presses against his prostate, and then Blaise’s fingers slid into him just above where Draco’s fitting. “Wh-when have you known me to be sh-shy about what I want in bed?”

“Never,” Blaise says, and now his voice is low and greedy. “Budge up to the edge of the bed, it’ll be the only way.”

Draco grumbles, but with a combination of his elbows and the backs of his legs and Harry’s knees, they manage to move towards the edge of the bed. Blaise stops Harry with a touch when they get close enough, and Harry glances over his shoulder again to admire Blaise as he strips off his shirt, revealing a wonderfully muscled chest with nipples that Harry once played with, using another wandless charm, in Potions until Blaise came right there.

“And where is our fourth?” Draco asks, gasping a little. Harry’s honestly not sure if that comes more from finding his way across the bed or from the effort of not thrusting up into Harry.

“Right here,” says Theodore’s deep voice from the door, and he sighs a little as he watches Blaise slide into Harry. “Too late, it appears.”

“N-never too late,” Harry says, his eyes squinting shut. He’s done this before, but not often, and the intensity of it wants to overwhelm him. He knows that in a few minutes he’ll just go happily into a pleasure spiral, which means that Theodore might feel neglected. “Remember that Self-Levitation Charm you were practicing last week?”

Theodore catches on to what he means right away, while Draco and Blaise are uttering questioning groans. To be fair, maybe that’s because they’re already balls-deep in Harry. “You would do that for me?” Theodore whispers.

“Ev-everything for each other,” Harry says, which is shorter than many other things he could say. That’s an advantage right now. His head is beginning to spin. “R-remember?”

“Yeah,” Theodore says, and his eyes are bright as he begins undressing, too, and reaches for his wand. “I remember.”

*

Harry stood up when he saw Theodore coming into the common room and turned towards the door.

“Wait, Harry. I need to talk to you.”

Harry glanced over his shoulder. “Then you can come with me to breakfast. If that’s not too _lowly_ for you.”

The other Slytherins looked rabidly curious, but Theodore was the only one who winced, ensuring that some of their secrets were preserved. Harry sneered at him a little and stalked out the common room door. They walked down two corridors in silence, until they reached the point where they would usually have turned to take the stairs out of the dungeons. Harry grabbed Theodore’s arm and steered him into an alcove.

“I fucked up,” Theodore admitted, even before Harry could raise the Privacy Charm around them.

“Bloody hell, did you ever,” Harry snarled, and Theodore winced. It was the first time since second year that Harry had agreed with him instead of accepting an apology. Harry folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Do you want me to detail all the ways that you did, or are you prepared to explain your reasoning?”

Theodore licked his lips. “I—I always assumed that you were—that you’d want to—” Harry let him stumble through it, not committing himself to a rescue, and Theodore finally looked away and muttered, “Use us.”

“By which you mean,” Harry said flatly, “that I’d take my pleasure without asking what you wanted, and I’d fuck you instead of the other way around. And I would, of course, _never_ kneel in front of you the way I wanted to do last night.”

Theodore shut his eyes and nodded, sucking in what sounded like a painful breath. Harry sort of hoped it was. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know as much about this as I thought I did. You’re our leader, so I thought we would be followers in the bedroom as well.”

Harry rolled his eyes, but waited until Theodore was looking at him so he would get the full impact. “I don’t let anyone do things to me that I don’t want. That’s not the same as being some kind of king or dark lord.” He eyed Theodore. “And there’s one thing you could do that would show you really have changed your mind.”

“What’s that?”

Harry knelt in front of Theodore, after casting a Cushioning Charm on the floor. “I know you wanted me to suck you off yesterday, but you decided that it wouldn’t be _powerful_ enough for me. And now?”

Theodore trembled. Harry thought he might say something about the Privacy Charm not being strong enough and their being near the stairs out of the dungeons, but then he saw the way Theodore’s chest was heaving and how his eyes had brightened, and smiled to himself. As much as Blaise disliked showing off their private life to people, Theodore had a sort of exhibitionistic streak.

“If you’re sure,” Theodore whispered.

“Yes, I am,” Harry said, and reached out and undid Theodore’s robes. He was one of those traditionalists who wore nothing underneath them, which Harry thought was mad, but did make it convenient to reach his cock.

It was warm and heavy in Harry’s mouth, and he enjoyed the way that a slight stroke of his tongue was all it took to drive Theodore mad. He was moaning and red-faced in seconds, and his hands were tapping irregularly against the wall behind him as he fought to keep them at his sides.

Harry thought about saying that he wouldn’t mind if Theodore put them on his head, but on the other hand, he was still a little angry. Let him suffer.

Besides, it would require him to take his mouth away from Theodore, and he didn’t want to do that.

He sucked hard, and his mouth filled with the taste of salt, while his ears echoed with Theodore’s panted little sounds. Harry smiled to himself. Theodore had been upset about the way Harry wanted to touch him, saying something about there being no _power_ for the one who was on his knees.

Only people who had never been in this position would think it was weak, Harry thought.

Then he let the thoughts about power and revenge disappear, and instead used his mouth the way he wanted to: coaxing Theodore to the side with his tongue, cradling him in one cheek, running his hand up to slide his fingers along Theodore’s bollocks and to the delicate skin behind them, cupping his head with a series of quick laps that undid him.

When Theodore came in his mouth with a sound like bliss, Harry came at the same time, in his own robes—and pants—and somewhat on the floor.

His own noise, he was sure, was like the deep, deep satisfaction that came with sharing something like this with a friend who had become a lover.

*

Theodore hasn’t given Harry any shit about sucking his cock since, and Harry’s glad of that now, as he performs the Self-Levitation Charm and floats off the floor and over the bed. He’s already got rid of his robes, because of course he has. Even when there are only people there who have all seen him naked before, Theodore is himself.

Harry waits patiently, or as patiently as he can when pleasure is rolling through him like thunder, for Theodore to maneuver himself into positions. He has to grip the bedposts and the curtains to do it, but finally, he’s hovering near Harry’s face level. Harry opens his mouth and sucks Theodore greedily in.

Blaise thrusts at the same time, and then Draco, and they’re sighing as they touch each other. Harry shakes and comes.

“ _That_ was fast,” Blaise mutters, unfairly coherent as always.

“You’re so great at this,” Harry replies, letting his head drop back as much as he can without letting Theodore slide out of his mouth, and of course that makes them thrust faster to live up to their reputation.

And since Harry has no problems with doing wandless lubrication, he has no problems with a wandless charm to get his cock hard again, either. Soon it’s bouncing on Draco’s stomach in a way that the rest of him can’t, held in place as he is by three cocks.

But that’s no problem, either. Harry might not move, but everyone else around him can, and he barely has to do anything other than let his tongue curve and lick around Theodore. His body still thrums with sensation.

He’s warm _everywhere,_ from his bollocks to his scalp, and shocks of sharpness jab into his stomach, and his magic rises and roils in response. For a moment, a circle of fire dances around the outside of the bed, safely behind Blaise’s back.

“If you—burn down this bedroom,” Draco pants out, then loses his place in the sentence. Harry’s arse has a record of making him do that.

“You wouldn’t care as long as you orgasmed,” Harry says, and then clamps his mouth back around Theodore before he can complain. Honestly, he’s impressed with himself for getting that sentence out. It’s not—

The moment’s coming when Harry’s pleasure, his triumph that he survived the war, his delight in having his friends for lovers, his _fullness_ , are all swirling together, and they’re going to drown him.

Harry _lives_ for this moment. His brain goes quiet, and his magic fills the air with a radiant shine, and he’s catapulted into air, and he _comes._

From the gasps around him, he’s dragged Draco with him. Theodore requires a little more coaxing, a little more working of Harry’s mouth around him, and then he tumbles over the edge, too.

Blaise, because he’s a show-off, thrusts into Harry’s arse a few more times, and follows. Harry turns his head and lazily kisses him, knowing that Blaise’s mouth will already be in place. Honestly, Blaise seems to like kissing better than anything else.

Then comes the moment when they’re all tangled and sticky and tired, and they have to drag themselves slowly off each other. Well, except for Theodore, who’s already clean because Harry swallowed everything (Harry is brilliant at that, if he does say so himself), and who just floats back over to the edge of the bed, hauling himself along with his hands on the curtains, and then ends his Self-Levitation Charm.

“Ugh,” Draco whinges from the center of the bed. “Get off me, you monstrously heavy git.”

Harry snorts and rolls over, separating with a squelch that has him drawing his wand. He loves sex, but there are limits to what he’s willing to endure in the aftermath, such as dried sweat and _other_ body fluids on his skin.

“Theodore,” Blaise says, with a drawl that’s not languid enough to show him exhausted.

“Yeah,” Theodore says, and his voice is soft and eager. That’s something that he only shows for Blaise, not the rest of them.

“If you’re that insatiable, go do it in your own bed,” Draco says, his eyes closed.

“We _are_ in my bed, Draco,” Blaise says, and then he’s manhandling Theodore around and arranging him how he wants him on the pillows. “Go back to your own.”

Draco complains about it, but Harry drags him back across the room and into _his_ bed. Blaise and Theodore absolutely will just have sex right next to them otherwise, and then Draco will be even more upset when he wakes up with his cheek caked with—things.

“Stay with me?” Draco whispers, curling up around Harry, even though Harry has no intention of doing anything else.

“Of course,” Harry says, and tucks Draco’s hair away from his face with a gentle gesture.

Draco wraps around him, and Harry’s sure that he’s going to go to sleep right away, but Draco can sometimes surprise him. He whispers into Harry’s ear, “My father is coming around.”

“ _Really_?” Harry pulls away to stare. The one thing he has accepted as an immutable law of the universe is that Lucius Malfoy will never approve of his son’s taking up with the Boy-Who-Lived, a _foreign_ Slytherin like Blaise, and the son of another Death Eater who actually died in the war. Hell, Sirius had an easier time accepting them, and it still took him nine months.

“He said that he’s wasted enough time opposing his only son’s desires, and he wants to work with us instead.”

Harry snorts, because even with his brain half-melted, he’s expert enough to translate Lucius Malfoy into English. “He wants to _work_ with us while subtly plotting to break us apart and introduce you to suitable pureblood witches. Or even wizards, as long as there’s not three of them.”

“While, at the same time, _I_ am manipulating _him_ into being less of a massive bigot.”

“I know,” Harry says. Draco of a few years ago couldn’t have done that, but none of them are who they were a few years ago. Harry isn’t trying to protect himself from acting like a Slytherin anymore. Theodore isn’t making the sort of constant judgments about people he used to. Blaise isn’t so detached by amusement that he risks drifting out of friendships entirely. And Draco isn’t the whinging little boy who wanted to know why Harry was Sorted into Slytherin. He’s actually a pretty good picture of cunning and ambition.

And love. Like all of them.

“Good,” Draco says, wrapping himself around Harry as if he’s the snake his Animagus form isn’t. “As long as you know that.”

Harry hums, and closes his eyes, and goes to sleep with one of his lovers breathing warmly in his ear and the others making all sorts of interesting noises across the way. He can’t wait to wake up tomorrow and be with them all.

In and out of bed. This is the kind of friendship, and partnership, that lasts.

**The End.**


End file.
